


Strange and You're Beautiful

by poisontaster



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-08
Updated: 2006-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-22 22:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4852304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, there was a little boy who wanted to be normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange and You're Beautiful

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who wanted to be normal.

He wasn't exactly a little boy by the standards of the world he found himself living in; his chronological age was the start of what's considered manhood by the custom of the country, but time and living have shown him in retrospect what a very little, naïve boy he was.

And then, he grew up. And things happened. Bad things. And now he's not a little boy any more, though he doesn't really feel totally sure he can call himself a man either. And normal seems a lot less important than just making it through another day.

Once upon a time, there was a slightly older boy who wanted to be a lawyer.

It seemed logical at the time; it felt like he'd spent his whole life arguing, why not make money doing it? Why not make it a future he can live with better than the one you left behind? Lawyers make good money. They live in one place, in nice houses that don't leak cold air in winter and have doors that swell and seal shut in summer. They have health insurance and vacation days and they don't have to use their clothes just as a way to hide their scars. They have pretty wives and they never, ever fuck their brothers. Or even want to.

But even older, he's had to face the strange and ugly truth that dreams change. And that sometimes you learn to love the things you have more than the things you thought you wanted. And that life will take you to places that you never even envisioned, even when God or gods think it's funny to give you psychic visions.

Dean once called him ambitious. Spat it at him, really, like it was the ugliest, nastiest word in the world. And at the time, Sam thought that was the problem. The whole freaking problem. Dean has no ambition. Dean's perfectly happy to keep drifting along, a nobody, no one, barely remembered and never with anything approaching fondness. Dean could have so much better for himself and doesn't want it and Sam just didn't get it.

But he was wrong. Dean does have ambitions. Dean does want things. They're just not things Sam had been prepared to recognize, before. Dean wants a world where people—humans—are safe. Where sons don't lose their mommies and daddies to anything other than natural causes. Where children don't really have to be afraid of the dark and keep guns under their pillows. Dean wants a world where Sam can be happy. And the fact that none of those wishes are selfish, that none of them are _for Dean_ doesn't make them any less valid.

In fact, Sam sort of thinks that makes them kind of wonderful.

Fucked up, but wonderful.

Dean hasn't quite grasped, either, that what Sam wants is different now than it used to be.

"Dean."

Dean's sitting on the edge of the railless porch, legs dangling off into space. Sam kneels behind him, long arms looping around Dean's neck. Dean stiffens, starts to pull away, but Sam's not budging. He was always good at that, too.

Dreams change. People change. And someday, if Sam keeps trying, Dean will see that too.


End file.
